Life imprisonment awarded to Karachi man for kidnapping, killing minor girl in 2012.

Byline: Naeem Sahoutara

A model court in Karachi on Monday awarded a life imprisonment sentence to a man accused of kidnapping a five-year-old girl for ransom and later strangulating her to death in 2012.

Waheed Ahmed, the accused, was found guilty of kidnapping Erum, alias Rani, and murdering her within the remit of Mubina Town police station in May 2012.

The additional district and sessions' judge Haleem Ahmed, of the model criminal trial court (East), ruled that the prosecution had proved its case against the accused beyond the shadow of doubt and that the accused had kidnapped the baby on May 01, 2012 in order to commit her murder.

The judge handed down life imprisonment to the accused for killing the girl and ordered him to pay Rs500,000 compensation to the legal heirs of deceased. Failure to make the payment would earn him an additional six months of imprisonment, which would run concurrently with the his main sentence.

The judge noted that the reason for awarding a lesser punishment was that neither the incident was seen by anyone nor the motive of the crime was clear, which constituted strong mitigating circumstances for awarding a lesser punishment.

According to the prosecution, Erum went missing while...